CHAPTER 5 – "The DNA Test That Changed Everything"
"No..."
Isabella staggered backward.
"That's impossible."
Judge Richard Halston smiled as if he had been waiting years for this moment.
"Not impossible."
"Planned."
The rain continued pouring over the prison yard as silence swallowed everyone.
Ethan looked at Isabella.
She looked back at him with tears filling her eyes.
Every memory they shared...
Their wedding.
Their first kiss.
The nights they planned a future together.
Everything suddenly felt like a lie.
Halston slowly opened another classified folder.
Inside was a DNA report bearing the seal of a secret government laboratory.
He tossed it onto the wet concrete.
Captain Ross picked it up.
His hands began to shake.
Probability of biological relationship: 99.998%.
Ross looked from Ethan...
...to Isabella.
"My God..."
Marcus Kane couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"So none of this was real?"
Halston laughed.
"Oh, it was very real."
"The emotions were real."
"The marriage certificate was real."
"But the identities we gave them..."
"...were fake."
Isabella collapsed to her knees.
"I don't remember any of this..."
Halston nodded.
"Of course you don't."
"You were both children."
"We erased your memories."
Ethan suddenly grabbed the judge by his collar.
"You experimented on us?"
Halston didn't resist.
Instead...
He whispered something only Ethan could hear.
"You weren't experiments."
"You were prototypes."
Those three words froze Ethan.
"What prototypes?"
Halston smiled proudly.
"The government wanted to create the perfect intelligence officers."
"So we kidnapped gifted children."
"Changed their names."
"Destroyed their past."
"And turned them into weapons."
Every person standing in the prison yard felt sick.
Captain Ross realized why Ethan's records had been sealed.
Why his fingerprints existed under different identities.
Why no relatives had ever come looking for him.
He had never officially existed.
Suddenly...
A loud explosion rocked the prison.
One of the outer walls collapsed.
Dozens of armed mercenaries stormed inside.
But something was different.
They weren't attacking Ethan.
They were attacking Judge Halston.
Bullets flew in every direction.
The judge's own federal agents turned their guns on him.
"What are you doing?!" Halston shouted.
The leader of the agents lowered his weapon.
"We've served you for twenty years."
"But today..."
"...we're serving someone else."
A black armored limousine rolled slowly through the destroyed prison gate.
Everyone stared.
The rear door opened.
An elderly woman stepped out wearing an ordinary gray coat.
She looked no different from a retired schoolteacher.
Yet every mercenary...
Every federal agent...
Every commander...
Lowered their heads.
Judge Halston's face turned ghostly white.
"It can't be..."
The old woman walked toward Ethan.
She gently touched his face.
Then whispered through trembling tears,
"I've spent thirty years looking for my son."
Ethan's heart pounded.
"Who are you?"
The woman smiled sadly.
"My name is Eleanor Cole."
"I'm not dead..."
"I'm your mother."
Judge Halston took one terrified step backward.
Because the woman standing before him wasn't just Ethan's mother.
May you like
She was the only living witness who knew the truth about the secret program...
—and she had come with enough evidence to destroy every powerful person involved.
